Microsoft

I thought rewards points are only for groceries, shops, credit cards, and plane tickets. I had no idea Microsoft has gone geeky about it too. The software giant has released the Bing Rewards app for Windows Phone devices earlier and now it has come to Android. This means more ways to get points for using Bing’s many services to exchange for prizes in the future. Actually, we've heard about this rewards program earlier this 2014 but no mention when it will be launched.

Smartphone, smartphone in my hand, who's the fairest of them all? Aside from our bad rhyming skills, the answer to that question must be fairly obvious, but in the interest of those who want actual numbers and statistics, a study conducted by SEO consulting firm Stone Temple showed a clear winner in the battle of the digital assistants. A test conducted on the built-in search assistants from Google, Apple and Microsoft showed that, of course, the search giant was miles away in terms of accuracy of results, although it might be lacking in the fun department.

While smartwatches are definitely catching on, particularly for the early adapters of technology, the idea of having keyboards on the watchfaces are still pretty much a novelty. Given the small screen space, it does feel weird to have a full-fledged keyboard on your wearable. Microsoft has come up with a sort of alternative to that, with its newly-released keyboard that actually lets you draw the letters and characters on your smartwatch that runs on the Android Wear platform, particularly if it's square or the Moto 360.

As smartphones and tablets continue to be more and more "sophisticated", one problem remains constant among all of them (yes, even you Samsung): battery life isn't all it's cracked up to be. The more you use your device, the more you need either a battery extender or to hug the wall socket. Microsoft has recently conducted a research that might lessen gadgets' battery consumption, at least for those that use OLED screens, and they're calling the project Fingershadow.

South Korean tech giant Samsung reportedly owes Microsoft some money. Samsung is believed to owe the Redmond company a total of $6.9 million in interest. The amount seems small considering Samsung already paid $1 billion last year. However, Microsoft went ahead and sued Samsung again for the unpaid interest.

YouTube user Corbin Davenport is gaining a bit of Internet notoriety, although we’re not exactly sure if this is the good or the bad kind. You see, he has tried to run some programs on Android Wear devices that, err… are not really normal nor useful to say the least. He has run Minecraft on his Samsung Gear Live, and has also ported classic PC shooter Doom on the same device. Now he has, for whatever reason unknown, managed to run a full Windows 95 operating system on his Android Wear device.

Considering how Android competes with Microsoft’s business in a lot of painful ways, it’s a wonder that the software giant’s products dovetail quite nicely with Android OS. There are a lot of Microsoft apps for Android out there, and most of them seem to be engineered for seamless integration. One of those apps, a free app at that, is Microsoft Remote Desktop which just recently received an update.

While watching videos and viewing pictures on your smartphone or tablet are more than okay when you’re on your own, it becomes a little more awkward or inconvenient when you want to show it to a group. That’s why streaming devices have been slowly growing in popularity, with Chromecast being the most well-known one. Microsoft has now released the Wireless Display Adapter that has the capability of streaming your content onto bigger screens, as long as your device is Miracast-enabled.

The cloud storage wars have been heating up, as more mobile users want easier access to their files and photos by saving it not on their devices’ limited space, but on the bigger cloud drives. In the early days, we were already happy with 5 or 10 GB of free space, but nowadays, that’s just a minuscule of the space we consume. Microsoft announced this weekend that they are doubling their OneDrive free storage from 15GB to 30GB.

The recently concluded IFA 2014 in Berlin has reinforced what many are saying that we are entering the ear of the wearable, as smartwatches took center stage. A lot of developers have also been coming up with wearable-friendly apps or making exisitng apps relevant to health bands, smartwatches and the like. Microsoft is now getting on the Android Wear "revolution", by making its note-taking app One Note available for smartwatches that are running on the platform.